Five hundred Slush’D in Karachi

We have finally been able to take a breather after the months of planning and execution for Karachi Slush’D and its side events. Don’t know how i would have done it without the passion, commitment and hard work of the awesome team I have at Katalyst Labs. They came up with terrific ideas to make the event unique. There were times when i shot down some of the ideas but they know how to get me to change my mind when they are really bent on doing something a certain way. And you know I have to admit that they are more often right than wrong 😁. Thank you Kashaf Jamal, Sobia Iqbal, Harris Qasim, Rubab Qizilbash, Asghar Qasim, Lamiya Qaizar, Maha Ahmed, Jannat Junejo, Irzum Salim, Muhammad Moiz, Mohsin Ali and Shahbaz for helping me to put on an awesome show. We couldn’t have done any of this without the support of our primary sponsors for Karachi Slush’D – Indus Valley Capital and Zindigi.

The venue was a new one for us too – National Aerospace Science & Technology Park (NASTP) on Shahrah e Faisal. We had thought it might be a challenge because of tight security but the NASTP team showed a great deal of flexibility and cooperated with the Katalyst Labs team beyond our wildest expectations. Kudos to them. They have such a fantastic facility with a lot of natural light. It was the perfect place to host Karachi Slush’D. We had the entire third floor so were able to have the Main Stage, the Product Stage, the Exhibition area, the Gaming Zone, the Matchmaking Area and Speakers Lounge all on the same level.

More than 500 founders, students, investors and professionals participated. There was so much energy throughout the event that it was impossible to not be infected by it. I don’t know how many conversations I had with multiple people – and any number of selfies were taken. Promoting and connecting people is what we do best at these events and that is exactly what happened. Hundreds of connections were made and we are hopeful that many of these will lead to successful collaborations and partnerships.

We tried to keep the content diverse, informative and interesting and it seemed to work as people enjoyed all the different segments.

The Founders who shared their startup stories – talked about challenges, failures and growth – were absolutely awesome – these included Bazar, Zood Pay, CoNatural, Social Champ, PostEx, Bykea, Zuria Dor, Bus Caro and Eat Food – all very different founders but with the same grit and determination that it takes to build companies.

I loved moderating the Investor AMA Session with Faisal Aftab of Zayn VC, Misbah Naqvi of i2i Ventures, Rabeel Warraich of Sarmayacar and Kirill Kozhevnikov of Conjunction Capital. They not only shared their investment thesis but also spoke about some of the investments they had made and why. They also talked about the future and shared predictions and projections for the next 12 – 18 months. There were some really good questions from the audience which the panelists answered without any hesitation. I wish we had more than an hour because of the level of interest.

The Improv session after lunch from the Improverts had all of us in stitches. Hassaan Bin Shaheen, Cyrus Viccaji, Usman Mazhar, Faris Khalid and Yasser Salehjee are such naturals at the art of comedy and at involving the audience in their improv. They re-energized everyone in the room and some new talent was discovered during audience participation.

Khan FM from Spotify and Zeeshan Haider Sikander from Coke Studio took the event to a whole new level in their conversation with Sabah Bano Malik where we learnt the inside story of the partnership between Spotify and Coke Studio and how it has blossomed.

Founders’ Fued hosted by Saif Ali was the best way to end the day. Four startup teams – Krave Mart, Maqsad, OkayKer and Connect Hear were put to the test by Saif. Buzzers and lights went off as questions related to the startup ecosytem, emoticons and the cleverly worded ‘this or that’ segment had to be answered at speed by the four teams. Harris Qasim and Maha Ahmed had worked hard in putting it all together alongwith the help of our design team – Asghar Qasim in particular. Maqsad won in a very close race with Connect Hear coming in a close second.

An overall amazing day with all of this happening on the Main Stage, demos on the Product stage, Exhibitors and the Gaming Zone fully engaged. And of course the Matchmaking area was buzzing throughout as mentors and investors had one-to-one sessions with young founders. The Photo Booth was as usual very popular as attendees took pictures with colleagues, peers and speakers.

The Live Painting through Projection Mapping by Areeb Tariq drew a lot of interest as well with some of the attendees actually contributing by using their creative abilities. The workshop “Build Locally, sell globally, Sell Saasy” conduced by Rebecka Zaveleta of Paesmo was highly appreciated by attendees. All in all it was an event that everyone from the startup ecosystem found exciting. People who had flown down from other cities wanted to know when we were going to host one in their cities. There are no plans for that to happen – at least not yet!

The Side events were great too. Karaoke and dinner sponsored by Fatima Gobi Ventures and Qawwali/Dinner sponsored by Sarmayacar. Next stop – +92Disrupt 2023 in November. You can’t afford to miss it.